Fran Noonan, St. Louis representative of the U.S. Peace Corps, will speak at 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 22, at Lindenwood University as part of the school’s 2008-2009 Speaker Series.

The presentation, on helping others abroad, will be in the Anheuser-Busch Leadership Room of the Spellmann Center on the main Lindenwood campus, 209 S. Kingshighway in St. Charles. Admission is free.

Noonan is responsible for recruiting for the Peace Corps in the St. Louis area and also has served as a Peace Corps volunteer. Her office is located in the Career Center at Washington University in St. Louis. As a volunteer, she and her husband, Jim Noonan, taught school on the outer island of Marakei in the Republic of Kiribati in the Central Pacific.

As a candidate for president, John F. Kennedy presented his idea for the Peace Corps at a late night speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in October of 1960, asking the students there how many of them would be willing to serve their country and the cause of peace by living and working in the developing world. The program was launched in 1961, and since then nearly 200,000 Americans have volunteered for the Peace Corps.

The Lindenwood University Speaker Series for 2008-09 runs through April 2009 and includes 11 exciting and thought-provoking events. For the schedule of speakers in the series, visit www.lindenwood.edu/academics/speakerseries.asp. For more information about the series, call Paul Huffman at 636-949-4823.